Fall 2010 - Asian University for Women

16
OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2
Cross-Cultural Friendships at AUW
Two Pakistani and Bangladeshi students at AUW defy history
through the bonds of friendship.
Minza and Ulfat are best friends. Like any other pair of young women who
share the close-knit bonds of friendship, they discuss the minutia of everyday
life, study together, and treat each other’s families as their own. There is just
but one critical difference that makes this friendship different from most others:
Minza is from Pakistan and Ulfat is from Bangladesh, two countries with a
history of bitter relations.
In 1947 Bangladesh—known as “East Bengal” under British India—separated
from India along with West Pakistan to form Pakistan. A two-part country agreement
turned East Bengal into East Pakistan, but the arrangement proved
untenable for the Bengalis, who felt marginalized in
their territory 1,600 km from the central government.
In 1971, East Pakistan separated from West Pakistan
to create the independent nation of Bangladesh.
The bloody war of independence soured the relationship
between the two countries, and left a legacy
of torment. Yet Minza and Ulfat, who met at AUW, are
inspiring examples of the University’s ability to bridge our friendship grew.”
historical divides and to create fresh experiences of
tolerance to erode entrenched narratives of distrust.
They embody the potential of AUW’s extraordinary
social experiment, in which young women from 12 countries throughout Asia
and the Middle East live and learn together in a setting removed and at once
intimately tied to their pasts.
Minza and Ulfat come from starkly different backgrounds. Minza grew up in
the city of Gujranwala in Pakistan, and Ulfat in a village outside the city of
Chittagong. Minza knew nothing of Bangladesh, and had only agreed to
come to AUW at the behest of her father, who insisted that AUW represented
a valuable opportunity. After studying at the Access Academy for a year,
Minza says: “Now I know what I’m doing here.”
Ulfat also knew very little of Pakistan. She subscribed to the stereotype that
Pakistanis are “very conservative and the girls always wear burqas.” Minza, in
contrast, only covers her hair. Ulfat had also been taught from a young age
about the role of Pakistan in Bangladesh’s emergence as an independent
nation, and she was shocked to discover Minza’s relative lack of knowledge
about the nearly one-year war. “I came to know that in [Pakistan] people
don’t know very much about the history of that time … that we had to fight
for 9 months and that many people died.”
The two young women became fast friends as roommates in the Access
Academy, where they were also members of the same academic group. The
first challenge to overcome was the issue of communication. Minza speaks
Urdu, which is similar to Hindi, and Ulfat speaks Bangla, the hard-won
national language of Bangladesh. During the war, Bangladeshi freedom
fighters held up their language as a symbol of their unique heritage and
distinct identity from Pakistan. Ulfat says, “We face difficulties sometimes.
But when we came to Access Academy, at first [Minza] didn’t know Bangla
so I [spoke] Hindi. She felt [she was] home if I spoke in Hindi with her. That’s
how our friendship grew.”
Ulfat’s concession to speak Hindi did not go without notice, and indeed,
caused some consternation among Ulfat’s Bangladeshi classmates. “Some
girls, they didn’t take it very easily,” Ulfat admits. But the two young women
only grew closer and before long Minza could understand Bangla. Now,
when they aren’t speaking in English, the two girls communicate with each
other in their native languages—Minza speaking in Urdu and Ulfat responding
in Bangla—in an arrangement that may leave an observer’s head spinning
but makes perfect sense to them. Minza says: “Many Bangladeshis know
Hindi, [it is] very similar to Bangla. Urdu and Hindi are [also] very close. If you
know one language, it’s easy to know another. Ulfat talks in Bangla with me,
I reply in Urdu. Now it’s habit, it’s usual.”
When Ulfat first invited Minza to her village outside of Chittagong, Minza was
wary, asking Ulfat repeatedly if her family was comfortable with having a
“We face difficulties sometimes. But when we
came to Access Academy, at first [Minza] didn’t
know Bangla so we [spoke] Hindi. She felt [she
was] home if I spoke in Hindi with her. That’s how
Pakistani in their home. But when she arrived, Ulfat’s family greeted her with
the hearty welcome and bottomless hospitality that is pervasive throughout
Bangladeshi society. “I felt really comfortable,” Minza says. “They just
accepted me as a friend.”
After their graduation from the Access Academy in the summer of 2009,
Minza invited Ulfat to travel with her back to Pakistan to stay in her home in
Gujranwala, a city in the Punjab province. At first, Ulfat’s parents were reluctant
to condone a trip to a country riddled with violence. “My parents were
really afraid [to send me] because of the bombings there,” Ulfat says. But
then Minza’s parents reached out to Ulfat’s father,
who is a fluent Urdu speaker, and reassured him of
his daughter’s safety in their care. Ulfat was granted
permission to spend a month in Pakistan with her
best friend, and now, “Our families are also kind of
close,” says Minza. Until Ulfat, Minza’s family had
never met a person from Bangladesh.
The unlikely friendship between Minza and Ulfat,
and the cross-cultural discoveries it has engendered,
ULFAT
exemplifies the University’s mission to create broadminded
leaders with the vision to confront the
variegated problems of tomorrow. Their friendship highlights AUW’s capacity
to force its students to confront the unfamiliar, and to usher them from the
realm of stereotypes into the realm of lived experiences, where preconceptions
are rarely correct and truths are far more complex. It is the realm that
best mirrors the world, and it is in this realm that the future leaders of Asia
should reside.
On My Return from Dhaka (Bangladesh III)
Faiz Ahmed Faiz* // Translation by Agha Shahid Ali
After those many encounters, that easy intimacy,
We are strangers now –
After how many meetings will we be that close again?
When will we again see a spring of unstained green?
After how many monsoons will the blood be washed
From the branches?
So relentless was the end of love, so heartless—
After the nights of tenderness, the dawns were pitiless,
So pitiless.
And so crushed was the heart that though it wished,
It found no chance—
After the entreaties, after the despair—for us to
Quarrel once again as old friends
Faiz, what you’d gone to say, ready to offer everything,
Even your life—
Those healing words remained unspoken after all else had
Been said.
*Faiz (1911-1984) was a renowned Pakistani Urdu writer who was widely considered
to be the leading poet of South Asia. He was a two-time Nobel Prize nominee
and the winner of the 1962 Lenin Peace Prize. In 1957, Faiz organized and hosted
a convention of poets from Africa and Asia in Chittagong.